Madrid,
In September 2014 – a decade ago last month – the Galería Silvestre began its journey, then with two locations in Tarragona and Madrid; Three years later, the firm would close its space in Catalonia to settle entirely in the capital, expanding its facilities.
The axis of its programming has always been contemporary painting, although other disciplines have also passed through its rooms (sculpture, photography, drawing and installation), and its representatives have been emerging artists, but with a certain career behind them and a line of consolidated work. Precisely with the aim of supporting new authors, Silvestre began to call for creative residencies in 2020 in Cellers, in the Pyrenees of Lleida: those selected are offered a space for work, reflection and coexistence in an environment in which the landscape can favor the development of productions more or less linked to nature (so far, Katarzyna Pacholik, Maria Luísa Capela and Catarina Lucas have benefited from this call, which will once again collect registrations from next December 1).
In the year of this anniversary, the exhibition with which the gallery, directed by Pep Anton Clua Monreal and Vanessa H. Sánchez, premiered the season in the latest edition of APERTURA Madrid Gallery Weekend is the collective “So ten years pass”, which brings together twenty-seven of the artists who have passed through here at that time.

Until November 8 (this exhibition will continue later) we will see Gloria Martín’s still lifes there, which prove her deep knowledge of the history of painting and the resources of trompe l’oeil, which she approaches from an unprejudiced approach without marking distances between art and crafts; compositions by Martinho Costa, which also establishes links between the past and present of that pictorial discipline, but has also brought to his series the daily visual collapse on the internet; drawings by Irene González born from observation, with highly nuanced blacks and grays that seem to respond to her gaze at hidden areas populated by ghosts; or creations by Ella Littwitz, who has worked with elements linked to the land to question the conventions assumed around the burning issue of relations between Israelis and Palestinians.
Also missing from this commemorative exhibition is Klaas Vanhee, who in his drawings, sculptures and installations explores the options of the body as a vehicle of action, the importance of gesture and memory; nor Gabriela Bettini, whose images take us to places of memory or exception where intense episodes have occurred (sometimes violent, other times hopeful), locations where time somehow stopped. Catarina Botelho will also come to meet us, who from a sometimes pictorialist photographic style focuses on architectures and places unrelated to productivity; Vicente Blanco, who filters real and imagined images into his drawings; Luísa Jacinto, whose first paintings, collages and videos were closely attached to the everyday and has evolved towards a luminous abstraction; or Germán Portal, whose painting seeks to reflect on the limits of this medium and its relationship with other techniques.
Marta Barrenechea exhibits her pictorial pieces attached to daily life, what is heard and felt; by Andrey Akimov we will contemplate photographs where there is no straight line; Salvador Cidrás will once again blur distances between nature, society and culture, understanding the artificial and the natural from continuity; and Rebecca Glover will ask for listening for sound situations linked to motherhood and the domestic.



We will be able to meet Sara Bichão, whose sculptures and drawings spring from time and memory; to David Fox, who displays in his interior and exterior paintings that will seem close to cinematic; Clara-Lane Lens, who paints the human and private life; or Paula Breuer, who brings very defined moments of everyday life to her scenes, which nourishes, as we see, so many of the artists who have passed through Silvestre.
Completing this exhibition is Lars Unkenholz, who presents bodies, animals, natures and common scenes in emphatic tones in his canvases; José Luis Valverde, who reviews traditional pictorial genres by perverting their codes; Amara Toledo, who investigates the image and its semiotics through painting; Assoukrou Aké, who seeks to deconstruct the magical charge that we give to some digital objects; Cristina Megía, whose painting is also based on life circumstances such as loneliness or silence; Angie Jon, who carefully selects the materials for her sculptures, taking an interest in those that evoke skin; Katarzina Pacholik, whose images are based on the social problems of our time; María Luísa Capela, who plays especially with volumes and colors; and, finally, Catarina Lucas, a young Portuguese artist who understands painting as sem fim commitment.
Long live the Silvestre Gallery.


“So ten years go by. Collective I”
WILD GALLERY
C/ Doctor Fourquet, 21
Madrid
From September 12 to November 8, 2024